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GENEVA – It has come to this. Bentley is going to build a sport/utility vehicle and Range Rover is going to build a convertible. The takeaway from the 2012 Geneva motor show is that the world’s great automakers still can’t discipline themselves to sticking with what they know.We could extend that criticism to BMW, which is getting into the kind of small, front-wheel-drive cars that its Mini division was meant to handle, and even Mercedes-Benz, which is extending its line of small, front-drive variants. Yes, Mercedes has been in this space for more than 15 years, but it’s expanding from two, the A- and B-Class, to five, including the CLC-Class.Strategic alliances aside, Europe seems to be lagging behind the American industry in correcting this kind of cross-pollination. While the European Union deals with a financial crisis that’s on the brink of becoming as serious as ours from 2008 and ’09, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler are getting healthy in the aftermath of two bankruptcies and one very serious reorganization.North America’s automotive production capacity is down from a peak of 23 million in the ‘00’s to a more manageable number, though analysts don’t seem to have any idea of what that current number is. Let’s just agree that it’s a more manageable level of over-capacity. Europe’s over-capacity is especially high as the EU financial crisis is killing demand for new automobiles.Shedding brands at GM and Ford have helped. No more Pontiac, Saturn, Saab, Hummer or Mercury. Ford has sold off its European luxury brands and most its interest in Mazda. Today, GM is showing some discipline in the way it manages Buick, GMC and Cadillac, though there’s much room for improvement. It’s trying to move Opel/Vauxhall back up where it was through the ‘70s, while making Chevrolet a global brand.Yes, GM is buying 7 percent of PSA Peugeot Citroen, though it’s mostly to take advantage of a huge, 12 million unit-per-year purchasing power, and its share of the French company isn’t much more than Ford’s remaining interest in Mazda. GM will pay about half of what it lost on its European operations last year for its share of PSA.Chrysler-Fiat, by its very nature is a bit more troubling, though I have no doubt that Chrysler would not be here if not for Sergio Marchionne’s Fiat Auto. Jeep would be a Chinese brand right now. Chrysler’s big success in the last year is that it has managed to regain most of the U.S. market share it lost in 2008-10. It should be noted that Jeep has been a huge portion of that success, with its two most authentic models, the Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee, regularly topping 10,000 units each in monthly sales. What worries me most is that Marchionne seems to be planning too many Chrysler models that overlap Dodge and Jeep.Asked whether he regrets that Daimler sold off Chrysler half a decade ago, now that Chrysler is propping up Fiat financially, CEO Dieter Zetsche noted Mopar’s Chapter 11 would have meant bankruptcy for the whole thing; Daimler would have gone bankrupt with Chrysler. Now, Chrysler is being run far better under Fiat than it was under Daimler, which wanted to make the whole Mopar lineup a fleet of cheap commodity cars and trucks while propping up Mercedes luxury.Luxury brands are in better shape than commodity brands in this economy, even in the EU. The new A-Class looks like a premium hatchback, especially inside, at least as far as I can tell from the three variants on display at Geneva’s Palexpo. Luxury/premium brands with entry-level models appear to be taking customers from the “middle” brands like Opel, at least in Europe, as aspirational VW and Ford buyers skip such brands to upgrade to the most affordable Mercedes and BMWs. They’re skipping the middle brands for Audis, too, which shows how smartly VW Group has played it. Thirty or 40 years ago, Audi would have been one of those skipped middle brands.The result is that Mercedes needs to add production capacity, Zetsche says. “Further production capacity will not be in Germany,” he adds, explaining that Benz needs to build factories where it’s selling more cars. Implicit in that explanation is that Mercedes could build new capacity in emerging markets, where it’s growing most quickly, while avoiding the high costs of an IG Metal factory.Chief Executive Wolfgang Durheimer says Bentley has not given the EXP 9F the green light for production, though our European editor, Paul Horrell, has reported that it is, indeed, on the way. Both a Bentley SUV and a Range Rover Evoque convertible would be such low-volume models that existing production capacity could handle them with perhaps a small increase in employment, or in hours. We weren’t prepared for the Geneva surprise, though, that Bentley’s SUV concept, on its 23-inch wheels, looked like something from Mansory’s space at the show.The Range Rover Evoque makes some sense, because Land Rover broke one of its rules by using a transverse-mounted engine unibody platform, and it broke another by actually building a two-door version. The question is, how much heavy, added bracing would it take to make the Evoque droptop’s structure stiff and free of cowl shake?Realistically, the Bentley EXP 9F is an easier sell. Durheimer uses the same excuse we’ve been hearing from other automakers for years, if not decades. Many Continental and Mulsanne owners already park an SUV in the garage next to their Bentleys. Sure, and they probably park a lawn mower in there, too.VW Group can count the VW Touareg, Audi Q7 and now the Porsche Cayenne as big, premium sport/utilities that look nice parked next to Continentals and Mulsannes. If Cadillac had thought that way back in the ‘90s, though, it would have left the Escalade business to the GMC Yukon Denali. Instead, it gave the Jimmy a very nice leather interior and some exclusive exterior trim. The margins were so high that GM is said to have paid off the first Escalade’s tooling in just six months. Everything after that was gravy.The Bentley SUV, which will be built on the next-generation Audi Q7’s modular MLB platform, undoubtedly will have a variable cost price many times that of the Caddy Escalade’s. With the healthy six-figure stickers it will command, it might not take much more than six months to pay off its thankfully unique sheetmetal. If it sells well in a Bentley’s relative terms, the SUV will eat up any excess capacity in Europe (and probably not the UK), instead of adding to it.Justification for the Bentley’s unfortunate sheetmetal, perhaps, but I’ll be happy not to see too many on the road.